


Karen

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [82]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mentions of attempted rape, Mentions of matt, Oneshot, Romance, appearance by Jessica Jones, kastle - Freeform, tumblr post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 02:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11934261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: Prompt: someone hurts Karen and Frank hunts them down. As he is at it, he realizes his feelings for her





	Karen

**Author's Note:**

> This mentions an attempt rape. So, beware if this is something that bothers you.

He barged in through the door, angry, so fucking angry, Jessica even raised her eyebrows when he walked past her.

“Where is she?” he asked the dark haired woman, who pointed behind him.

“Bedroom.” He turned to walk in and heard her sitting down on the couch again. “Slow down, she’s fine.”

He didn’t. Only when he reached her door, to knock, opening it when he heard the “come in.”

She smiled at him and he felt his chest tightening inside him. His face must have shown it, because she shook her head while he walked to her.

“Frank, don’t. I’m ok.”

“Ok? How can you be ok? Look at you!” he said, trying not to shout, walking to her, ignoring the chair by the window and sitting on the bed, by her legs, reaching for her face, feeling his blood boil at the purple, sickly bruise on her cheekbone.

“It’s not that bad, really,” she started, trying, because she knew, she knew him. “I’m more worried about having lost my work ID. I’ll have to make another.”

Noticing the scratch on her jaw, he looked down her arms. Her elbow was also bruised.

“What else?” he asked.

“Frank”, she started, but he wouldn’t have her trying to appease him, not with this, not this time.

“What else? Show me.”

She looked at him, stubborn as ever, but after a few seconds, sighed and moved to take the covers from her legs.

Frank’s breath left him at the sight of the big bruise by her knee and the scrapes and scratches all over her thighs.

“There’s one on her ribs, too”, came a voice from the door.

“Jessica!” Karen chastised, but he was already looking at her face again, asking in silence, and she rolled her eyes, but lifted her shirt.

“That was before he got her face. Punched the wind out of her first, and when she still managed to keep him away, he went for her face”, Jessica explained from the door.

“Can you please not make it worse?!” Karen asked through gritted teeth while Frank touched the big bruise, trying not to explode, trying to keep the red he was seeing at bay, trying, trying, trying and failing.

“I would if he hadn’t tried to rape you and then thrown you off a building when he couldn’t”, the detective replied, almost bored, walking out of the room right after.

Frank lowered her shirt, hiding the dark bruise from himself, and bowed his head, thinking. When he got up, she grabbed his hand with both of hers, pulling him back, and he only went because it was her.

“Frank, please-”

“Don’t ask me that”, he interrupted, shaking his head, still trying to keep himself in check. “Don’t ask me that. Not that.”

“Frank,  _I’m fine_. I don’t want you to do this. Please, don’t go, please.”

Again, because it was her, he considered. For a moment, he considered. And then he looked at her face again, marked by some low life that thought he could-

Getting up, he squeezed her fingers quickly before pulling his hand from hers.

“I can’t. Not with this. Not with you. I can’t.”

She was repeating his name, calling him, when he walked out the door and closed it, holding on the knob to stop her from following him.

“Where is he?” he asked Jones, who waited for him, leaning against a wall.

“He’s the security guard of that office building across the street from Rand. I think it’s a fashion designer’s office, or something. If he’s not there, he went home. I didn’t have time to take a good look at him before I had to jump down to get her. I’m texting you his address now.”

His phone pinged in his pocket while Karen tried to open the door, banging on it, calling his name, asking him to drop it.

“Friend of mine is working on a trace of his phone. I’ll send it to you as soon as I have it. You should go”, she said, taking his place in holding the door knob still so Karen couldn’t open it. “Matt’s gonna be here in a second.”

He was out the door and in his car in less than a minute, nearly flying down the stairs.

.:.

Frank drove towards the offices, but he doubted he was there.

Before he got there, though, his phone pinged again, Jessica had sent him the current location of Karen’s attacker.

Brice. Security guard. Thirty-four year old piece of shit. Unmarried, no kids, just two brothers, one of which was serving time for assault and grand theft auto.

While turning the wheel towards his new destination, Frank thought about the bruises he had seen on Karen. On  _Karen_.

His Karen.

That thought startled him, but just slightly. It has been a while now, that he started seeing her as sacred. Untouchable. As his.

This city could burn to ashes for all he cared, he was not like Red, trying to save everyone. What he did was dispose of the ones who needed disposing, but he wasn’t just as noble. New York could go to hell, the county could implode, the world could go fuck itself, as long as she was safe. This much he knew, she had to be safe, if his life depended on it.

Because-

Fuck, because he loves her. Of course he does.

More than anything anymore, she only loses to the memory of Maria and the kids, but she also made it all so much better, how long until she rose to the very top and started sharing that spot with the family he lost?

Karen was here. Alive. He could touch her, talk to her, hear her. And he loves her. He loves her and, God forgive him, he’ll be damned if he loses her too. He’ll die, this time.

Admitting that to himself did nothing to calm him down. On the contrary, it fueled the rage inside him. It would only subside when he saw the life out of Brice.

And he would see it.

The asshole was holed up in his brother’s apartment, the one who was in jail, the other one having cut ties with his siblings, trying to lead a right life on the other side of the country (Jones was good at her job). Brice dropped the beer he had been drinking and the can fell on the carpet when Frank kicked the door open, the blue haze of the TV making the asshole look pale and sickly. He stumbled on his legs when he tried to get up, reaching for a gun on the tv rack.

The first punch was harder than he intended. Brice fell to the floor, disoriented, and Frank had to pull him back up by his shirt.

“I- I- I didn’t know!” he mumbled when Frank stopped hitting him long enough, three of his teeth on the floor, one eye swollen shut. “I didn’t know it was her, man, I swear, I didn’t know!”

She had to stop writing those articles about him. People were starting to notice.

“It should have been no one, asshole”, he said after another punch, to his ribs this time. “But, because it was her, you know what’s gonna happen to you, don’t ya? Because it was her.”

He punched and he kicked and he punched some more. When Brice was barely conscious, Frank dragged him outside and up the stairs, to the roof.

Before he could climb the last flight of stairs, someone opened a door to an apartment.

A woman. Young, big dark eyes zeroing in on them. She took a look at Frank, then Brice, who turned to her and mumbled some kind of plea for help, and then back at him.

Frank waited. She got out, the trash bag she was carrying dragging behind her, walked to them and spat on Brice’s shirt.

“Good”, she said towards Frank, and walked away. He resumed his climb.

Brice was lying on the ledge of the building, crying and mumbling and spitting out blood.

“Stay still, you piece of shit”, Frank said, just to scare him further, while reaching into his pocket.

When he hit the ground, thrown from the top of the building, Frank was glad his head didn’t explode on the concrete.

This way, people would be able to read the “RAPIST” Frank had tattooed on his forehead with his pocket knife. The skull was carved on his chest, his shirt on Frank’s hand, to be burned later, to stop the police from using that woman’s saliva against her.

.:.

He went back to Karen an hour or two later. Stopped at his own apartment first to shower, change his clothes, take the smell of blood and sweat off him.

When he walked into her bedroom again, he was feeling better, both from his shower and for the knowledge that the responsible for bruising her face like that was no longer breathing.

She looked at him when he walked in, just the nightlight on in the room.

To his surprise, she shook her head and started to cry, her brows knit together, angry with him.

Even crying, she looked more beautiful than ever.

“You’re crying for him?” he asked, sitting down next to her legs again, noticing that she let him, at the very least. “You’re mad at me and you’re crying for him? After what he did to you? What he would have done?”

“I’m not crying for him”, she said, broken voice, he needed to hold her, to make her better, to make that bruise go away. “I don’t want you killing for me. I don’t ever want that.”

Fuck he loves her he loves her he loves her.

Moving closer, he reached for her hand.

“If I’m breathing-”

“ _No_ , Frank!” she insisted, gripping his fingers.

“If I’m breathing, I’m gonna make sure you are, too. You don’t have a say in that. If I have to send the whole of New York to hell, I don’t care-” she shook her head again and fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “No one’s gonna hurt you. Not while I’m alive. Not you. Never you.”

He told her about the woman, the one that saw him. How she looked vindicated, how she made sure to leave her approval on what he was doing, how he probably had hurt many other women, not all of them lucky enough that Jessica Jones got there in time to stop him.

She still had tears in her eyes, making the blue look liquid, two pools of sorrow for the lost souls, for his soul.

“Where’s Red?” he asked, half surprised he hadn’t found him there.

“I sent him home”, she said, small voice, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I knew you were coming back, didn’t want to have to hear you fighting.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling at that. Every time she chose him over Murdock was a victory. Not a small one, at that.

“I got you something.”

“Oh, God”, she almost moaned, looking at his hand when he reached inside his back pocket. “It’s not like a finger, is it?”

He clicked his tongue in annoyance and dropped her work ID on top of her legs.

“He kept it.”

She picked it up and looked at it, for a long time. With a sigh, she finally looked up, blinking, uncertain, and put it on the bedside table.

“Thanks”, she said, left hand still holding his, letting his fingers wander around her palm, her wrist. “And I still don’t want you to kill for me. But… Thanks. For… For being there. For me.”

He had a hand caressing her face and then pulling her to him, carefully, before he even decided to do it.

“Don’t thank me.”

Her hair smelled like home.

She was his home. She was his.

And, even more, he was hers.


End file.
